Sprint policy - HMRC

Editor's Notes

• #4: As a Department, we are further ahead in terms of the 3 aspects of open policy making in our operational areas - we are less advanced in using this systematically as we design policy – (Gathering new insights, engaging full range of views and testing solutions in the real world) I would say we currently fluctuate between informed policy and developing policy with users at the heart in terms of policy development – however for operational changes we do, on occasion, move into the collaborative policy making space Our ambition is high though there are constraints - As with other Departments, there is a need for some policy to be developed on a ‘need to know’ basis so much of what is described is difficult. However, even with that constraint, this does not mean that we can not and should do more. We have recognised this and are taking steps to implement, such as the design of learning products for policy professionals – we will now go through some of our approaches; some examples of where these have reaped benefits and what we have planned for the future to ensure this is a systematic way of working
• #5: Where does customer fit into the Policy process? Answer – in every step! Good policies are developed through understanding which customers are affected, how they will be affected and how they are likely to react. It’s important to understand the target audience’s potential attitudes and behaviours towards the policy that is being developed – beware the law of unintended consequences! Worth mentioning that although communications and evaluation are at the end of the process if these are not planned for from the start there will be problems We recognise that policies can be developed over a matter of hours, months or years – you may question whether there is time for any of this when you are up against a tight timeframe – you must make time; we may have information readily available that will help in your policies development AND it does provide benefits
• #6: Saving from printing and postage alone of £10,000 (reduced from £39k to 29k) – PLUS people read the information 12:02–12:03 Insight in customer language and satisfies the 4R test Real Relevant Ring Bells Reaction
• #7: To bring this alive for you, I’ve got a few examples of where Insight has been used in Government. You may have come across these examples before and one quite well known and pretty genius piece of insight comes from looking at how children view school meals. The traditional way of trying to encourage kids to eat their school meals was focussed on the food. But in actual fact, they were looking at it from the wrong angle. The kids were much less interested in the food and what was important to them was the environment and the experience of school meals. They wanted to be able to eat with their friends in a sociable environment. The Insight here is ‘lunch isn’t about food – it’s about my friends’.
• #8: Change the mindset and create belief You may have heard of Immersion – Closeness uses same principles. Its about spending some time with your customers. This usually run as a type of focus group whereby you bring customers together and have an informal chat with them on certain topics. Or there are different activities you might want to undertake, such as listening into customer phone calls, individual depths interviews or visiting their environment. Ive also designed sessions where we co-create products with customers and introduce stimulus material and products. Ultimately it is designed so you can understand their agenda and get a better understanding of things from their perspective. Allows you to develop an appreciation of: What their lives are like What is important to them How they think, feel and act What they think of particular aspects of taxation How they feel about dealing with HMRC However, it’s important not to mix this up with proper research
• #9: Closeness Is best used as an informal way of learning and understanding real customer issues Can be used as part of a specific project or as an on-going way of keeping in touch with customers Encourages staff to step inside the life of a customer and contemplate the context in which they respond to and manage tax matters Is complementary to other sources of customer knowledge and can offer some insights… But cannot be used as the sole basis of business decisions
• #10: So what is a customer Journey? A customer journey is a description of the experience a customer has as they encounter a service or a set of services, taking into account not only what happens to them but their responses to the experience.” Not just HMRC - it is being actively promoted by the Cabinet Office & the Service Transformation Contact Council Following FST agreement , the individuals Costing Customer time methodology was published on the HMRC internet site. Actual – Post Office Experiential – NHS – You might have an ongoing reason for using (dodgy knees) so you have a round of appointments with the Dr, physio, scans, consultants etc. Your experience of this will colour your perceptions and how you react to that organisation in the future. Relationship – Large Business (Dedicated Customer Relationship Managers) Transactional – VAT Returns Emotional/ Rite of Passage – Birth / Death/Pensioners. These are journeys precipitated by one-off events Having child for the first time – can move from Willing & Able to Willing but need Help Often focus on transactional because it is the interaction we see with customers but there are all sorts of angles EXAMPLE - becoming a pensioner – quite a cliff edge to fall off & it’s important that we understand that so that we can plan to make becoming a pensioner a better experience for customers & a more efficient process for us. Why do we need Customer Journeys? HMRC Purpose, Vision and Way is to be customer focused but traditionally looked at processes from an internal perspectiveNow have a Customer Centric Business Strategy built from what we know about customers Need to understand where customer behaviour impacts on our (and other government departments) processes and operations Aim to minimise customer burden and improve our reputation, efficiency and yield And our customers are both Businesses and Individuals and in the past as you’ll see we used different tools to measure our impacts. The ABT for business and TCS for Individuals
• #11: What are customer journeys? The end to end experience – in a supermarket it may be parking, finding what you want, queuing to pay. Traditionally inward focused- this allows us to look at all the interactions a customer has with us as it negotiates our products and proceses Need to understand where customer behaviour impacts on our (and other government departments) processes and operations For policy development cj mapping allows us to understand the real impact on customers of proposed change and considr the relative merits of various options. We use TCS to map customer journeys and high and low spots of the experience (heart monitor) Improved Customer Experience not highly unusual journeys and take into account the good and the bad Greater Efficiency
• #12: Behavioural science insights for tax: Drawn from behavioural economics, psychology and a range of associated disciplines: insight from academic study of decision making specific insight from tax experiments / evaluation / empirical work interlinked insight from academic study of tax and compliance Background if questions: 1. Wider empirical and evaluation work: E.g. evidence looking at the withholding/regular payments and the withholding paradox 2. Experimental work E.g. wide ranging evidence on honesty in declarations HMRC’s Tax administration research centre 3. Theory and evidence from outside tax E.g. Prospect theory. Defaults – pensions. 4. Real life evidence from field experiments / trials E.g. large scale trial on impact of audits in Denmark (Kleven et al) 5. Our own evaluations – although at the moment minimal evidence on “policy”
• #13: Here is an example of a new, simplified letter that created. HMRC then created variations of this letter that were identical except for a short phrase. The example here is “Nine out of ten people pay their tax on time.” This is an accurate statistic that was intended to act as a prompt that the social norm is to pay tax on time.
• #14: [UK Norm] “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time.” [Local Norm] “The great majority of people in your local area pay their tax on time.” [Debt Norm] “Most people with a debt like yours have paid it by now.” [Local + debt norm] “The great majority of people in your local area pay their tax on time. Most people with a debt like yours have paid it by now.” Norms based on geographic similarity and debt similarity increase payment rates. Norms that refer to the recipient significantly increased payment rates, whereas a norm that did not make such a reference did not. Geographic similarity and debt similarity have an additive effect; increasing the specificity of the norm increases its effect.
• #15: Some people might argue that this focus on norms is misplaced. Rather, you should just apply some hard economic incentives and you will get much bigger results. Well, we tested this – we warned about the main economic incentive to pay (daily interest charges). But we found that warning of interest charges had about the same effect as the norm messages (and did not do much differently from simply providing more information on how to pay). NB: Maybe mention procedural fairness and tax morale.
• #16: E.g. In communications it is important to focus on what the customer needs to know and not everything we would like them to know. The action they need to take should be clear and easy for them to undertake. This seems like common sense but in my experience many government communications fail this test. Also worth considering using life events and‘moments of change’ in people’s lives as opportunities to engage on related behaviours (e.g. new job, moving out, new home, having a baby, retirement)
• #18: We thought a message that ‘other people used this scheme and like it’ would positively influence behaviour. The results were mixed – it needs to be explored further.